


the sceptre in his childish fist

by medeia



Category: Henry VI - Shakespeare
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 11:13:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7889266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/medeia/pseuds/medeia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even as a child, there was never a day when Henry did not know himself to be king.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the sceptre in his childish fist

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angevin2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angevin2/gifts).



At the end of all hope, when he sat alone as he had never before been in his life, Henry found that he was not afraid, that he could not be afraid: there was nothing and no one left to be afraid for.

He had not been so long in the Tower as to have fallen into a regular pattern of doing things, but there was at last time for prayer and study, for hours spent on bent knees and with clasped hands, hours spent in utter stillness. His days was given over to it, and there were no affairs of state to demand his attention, there was no Margaret to look at him with frustration and resentment set livid against her eyes.

The Tower was as it had always been, as Henry supposed it had been before he was born, and would be after he was dead. What difference did it make, if he were prisoner or king? If the guards around him now served a different purpose? They at least did not care if he did nothing but pray; it could only make their work easier. There was no one now to notice if he fell into one of his strange fits of silence and woke to find it dark where it had been light before.

Time and time enough. All he had in his possession was time, however many days or weeks or hours Edward of York had allotted to him in which to live.

*

Even as a child, there was never a day when Henry did not know himself to be king.

It was impressed upon Henry by everyone, his mother and his uncles, his tutors and his nurse: Henry, _Rex Angliae et Franciae et Dominus Hiberniae_ , King of England and France and Lord of Ireland, King by the grace of God and his descent.

He sat in state, and his uncles, hardened men who had fought in France and Wales since the days of their youth before Henry was ever born, bowed to him and bent the knee in his presence; his nurse chid him but said it was for unkingly behaviour and added “Your Grace” at the end of her scolding; his tutor solemnly lectured him on the attributes of a good king, and listed the example of his father; his mother was not often so formal with him, but amongst her smiles and embraces, her eyes searched his face for something – for his father, he realised when he was older, for the stamp of the late King Henry on his face, as if he were more his father’s than himself – and hovering on her lips, delivered in French or accented English, _Remember you are a king_.

But for all that, it did not at first seem to mean so much: his uncles paid him the due forms of reverence, yes, but it was they who ruled in fact and he in name only, and both his nurse and mother might scold him as a child as well as a king.

This was so until the year his mother left his household very suddenly, leaving Henry’s Uncle Gloucester to go red at the mention of her name, and the servants and courtiers gossiping in corners about her, for reasons that he did not yet understand.

After that, the reminder that he was king was more than reminder: his tutor seemed to redouble his emphasis on the necessity of kingly virtue and duties, and it was no longer his mother who saw shadows when she looked at him, but his tutor, his uncles, all of the court: all of them measured him against his father, looking for him in every word he spoke, every action he took, in the lines and bones of his face, the shape of his hands and neck.

France was mentioned often, too. There was always trouble there, it seemed, though no one was able to explain why, exactly, when he asked, or why they could not make peace there.

Let God make him a good king, he prayed. Let him be a pious and virtuous king, and let him bring justice and peace to his subjects in England and France.

*

Margaret was as lovely as Suffolk had claimed, like some rich image out of his psalter, slim, straight-backed and with a swanlike neck, exceedingly fair in all things. As far as Henry could tell though, she utterly lacked the _humble lowliness of mind_ that the Duke had also proclaimed her to have.

She did not much resemble her namesake saint, either. If a dragon proposed to swallow his wife whole, Henry could not imagine that she would stand meekly by and permit such a thing; she would (though the thought felt close to blasphemy) be more likely to seize a sword in her hands and slay the dragon for its impertinence, more St. George than St. Margaret.

Margaret made as excellent a queen as he could have desired, her wit matching her beauty, clothed in a royal dignity Henry himself suspected he could not match, though he did sometimes wish she could have been as much a _wife_ as she was a queen.

Secretly, Henry had hoped that she would be of an unwarlike and compliant nature, to match his own, to be a support and helpmeet in all his endeavours to maintain peace in his court. A wife should be peaceful in nature, he had been taught, and a queen a peacemaker, who ought to intervene only when interceding for mercy, though when he thought of the wives he knew – Gloucester’s duchess sprang to mind, prouder than her lord – and the queens – his late mother, who had never seemed to care much for the authority of her brothers-in-law – Margaret was perhaps not so unusual after all. She reminded him of a hawk, fierce after long confinement and unwilling to be mewed again.

“I do not understand,” she declared, early in their marriage. “Why is it that the Duke of Gloucester is Lord Protector still, when you are of age? And why is it that petitioners address their pleas to him, and not to you? Who is king, you or him?”

“Peace, Margaret,” he had said, for the first time and not the last. Margaret, watching him closely with a narrow look, left the subject – for the time being.

If only they could understand, his wife, his court, if his nobles could only settle themselves, and be content, if only they would not quarrel and push for preference, for war with France, always, always France.

*

His queen’s grief for Suffolk frightened Henry. Her fierceness was not quenched by her tears, as he might have supposed, but only increased. It stung too, to know that any grief for him would no more have matched it than a puddle would the ocean, and to remember her lack of sympathy at his grief and horror at his uncle’s death.

Once, before the present trouble, he had seen Margaret seated with Suffolk side-by-side in silence. Nothing much had seemed to pass between them, but then Margaret had turned her head and laughed, and Henry had seen how momentarily Suffolk’s hand had covered hers, how they exchanged a glance of more tenderness than Margaret had ever bestowed on him.

He had done nothing, said nothing, had turned back the way he had come. There had not really seemed anything in particular to do about it; he had half known already.

 _Margaret, do you love me?_ But that was not a question Henry could ask of his queen.

 

*

“Think on our son,” urged Margaret.

Again and again: “Think on our son”, with the silent addendum “As you have so often failed to do.”

And what was Henry to say to her? That he had given way, because he longed for peace, because he did not want to bring war and havoc down on his subjects? That York’s claim had merit?

That he prayed that his son might be free of this thing? And he turned from her, lest she somehow divine any of this in his face.

*

There was the example of Job to hold fast to: patience in the face of misery, obedience to God in all things. Job, who had lost his land and livestock and his children. His children.

And did he not now have everything he had ever wanted, in his most secret thoughts? He had longed for peace in the land, and it seemed that King Edward might now have peace without King Henry. He had prayed that the cup might pass from his son, that his Edward might not be weighed down with the weight of the stolen crown, and his prayers had been answered irrevocably. He had longed within his heart of hearts to lead a life of prayer and contemplation, to lay down the burden of the crown again, and that was all that had been left to him.

If peace were only certain, Henry’s prayers would have been content – but he had seen York’s sons (still and always York’s sons, no matter how many years the man was dead). Already they fell out amongst themselves, already the gleam of ambition in Clarence’s eye was matched and outmatched by that in the eye of York’s namesake ( _Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye -)._

Like wolves they had ravaged the land, like an unrelenting plague – and whose fault was that? Was it, as he had long suspected, in his blood, in his bones and being, that he brought down calamity on the kingdom?

 He did not know what had happened to Margaret, and was glad, or almost glad, for now she could not look at him, and now he would not look at her, and see the stark reflection of their son’s body in her eyes.

He sat to his books and prayer. Sat to his study, without fear, without anything, to await death.

And saw, out of the corner of his eye, York’s third son, with serpent’s eyes and death in his hands.


End file.
